Was Stanton a murder target?

[STS Lincolnite]

Some additional thoughts.

To some degree, I think the actual legislated line of presidential succession, was irrelevant. It only mattered what Booth and his action team or other potential assassins ("the NY group"?) believed was the line of succession. Roger your idea of how that conversation might have influenced Booth's thought process and then actions is a good one. This belief as to a line of succession is part of what would drive their potential targets with respect to that process and attempting to decapitate the govt as John F and others have discussed. Also, I would think that Stanton, in charge of the war department (not to mention the manner in which he did his job) would make him a potential target regardless of the fact that he was not technically in the line presidential succession. Same with Seward. Many in the South (and probably North too) reviled him and may still have seen him as pulling Lincoln's strings thereby wanted him gone as well. As Bill stated, in the absence of Lincoln and Johnson, Stanton (and I think Seward too) would have been the two to have potentially stepped up to fill a power vacuum and thereby, functionally, been part of the Presidential succession though not technically so.

An additional thought on Seward. When looking into the line of presidential succession for some lectures I gave, there were a few fuzzy areas related to the acting president and the election of a new President as articulated in the Presidential Succession Act of 1792. If I remember correctly the Secretary of State had some role in the election process for the new President (the Senate President Pro Tem was only “acting President” until a new President could be elected.) It was put forward by one author (can't remember which one) that it was the role of the Secretary of State to call the electors together in order to elect the new president when President and VP were not able to function in the role of President and then to certify the election results in such a case. I don’t recall that is explicitly stated in the Act, and I don't know if that is accurate, but I imagine without direct clarity there could be many interpretations of how that election process would or should go. Had Booth and team been successful in eliminating all their targets, with Seward dead, there would be a question as to how the election of the new President would be handled. Certainly any debate over interpretation of the succession, how to move forward to restore the executive branch of the government, how to actually administer the executive office, how to direct the war effort, and the inevitable political power grab would take time and would be a nightmare. The government would likely have been paralyzed (at least for some time) and the so-called "Constitutional crisis" as we have heard for a long time would probably have come to pass.